Blogging Q&A: Help me! I procrastinate.

We're here with another addition of Blogging Q&A. If you missed our last one, this is a series where we take questions we have gotten from the blog, social media, or our best selling e-Course Blog Life and answer them. This week's question comes from a Blog Life student:

"How in the world do you kick procrastination when it comes to blogging? I have a lot of time, I admit. But I drag my feet every time to do a post. How can I stay active and inspired when it comes to blogging? Any tips?!!"

First off, I think we can ALL empathize, right? Even if you don't blog, we've all felt the sneaky pull of procrastination from time to time in whatever our goals may be. It's tough! Here are a few things that we've found over the years that help us:

1. Lists + Planning.

We cannot emphasize enough how important planning is, even if you consider your blog a just-for-fun hobby. Planning is making a road map to success. Think about what your blog's overall goal is and plan out a few months' worth of content ideas that help support this overall message. Plan how often you want to post and what your big picture content goals are for the next 3 months, 6 months, and year. Then make a to-do list every day that you work on your blog to break down this plan into digestible steps. So often we can get overwhelmed with how much we want to do, or we just don't know where to start. This usually leads to wasting time on IG, Pinterest, or other activities that can easily swallow up huge amounts of otherwise productive time. Make a plan. Make a list to execute that plan. Then do the list. We know it sounds simple, and it is! But if you fail to plan, well then as they say, you plan to fail.

2. Variety is the spice of life, I mean, blogging.

Sometimes we procrastinate because we are bored with our current blog post, project, etc. Find ways to add some variety to your work! If you're excited and passionate about your content, your readers will be as well. Of course there are sometimes tasks that we just can't get away from, like editing big batches of similar photos, answering emails, etc. These are just as much a part of blogging as the exciting, creative stuff. You may want to ignore these tasks to work on something more interesting to you, so instead, try to find ways to speed up the process without compromising on quality. An easy example is editing big batches of photos. Look up some articles, take a course, or learn from friends how to batch edit. Challenge yourself to find ways to cut down on time spent on monotonous tasks by setting up processes that help you automate or move faster.

3. The work hours rule.

Implement what we like to think of as "the work hours rule." This is for you stay-at-home full time bloggers as well as those working in the evening or weekends. No matter what time of day you work, when you set those work hours, stick to them. So if you plan to work on a blog post Tuesday night from 6-8pm, don't schedule anything else, don't start a load of laundry, don't check Facebook, don't start dinner at 7:45pm, etc. From 6-8pm you are all business. This is also something we deal with since we work from home. It's SO easy to get distracted by a floor that needs to be mopped, or to start scrolling through IG and then 30 minutes passes in the blink of an eye. Watch out for things like this no matter when you work – and work during those work hours!

If you want even more tips for how to be productive and get stuff done, check out this article. Also, if you love blogging and want to know more about our course, you can read more about Blog Life here. xx. Elsie + Emma

25 Comments

Love this post so much! I am SUCH a procrastinator. It’s awful. Love this, and love the previous post! I hadn’t actually read it until today. Such good tips, thank you! ♡
ox Taylor | http://www.mycupofchic.com

i don’t think there will be ever enough posts about how to stop procastination… i run a small business, and me and my husband we both work from home. Our business has some employees, but they also work from their places… so… we hardly have to stick to any plan….. at first it wasnt that good.. since you dont have working hours… you end up working all the time.. because, when procastinating… you dont really get the lovely feeling of free time… it leaves you with a sour taste… of just… wasting time……… for me, the best tip, is the one you girls mention.. working hours… i love my free time… and i love my business… and for both things to work… they have to be separated… we “open” at 9 am, we stop for food around midday until 2 (i cook, every day, so it takes a bit more than just a break…) and then we go on .. around till 6 … and while working hours… I WORK, i try to stop navigating on the internet… watering my plants, etc… at first, i didnt like it that much… i felt like… hey, wait… i can do whatever i want… why do i stick to this??? but later on, it really helped me… of course, i can still have the luxury of going to the supermarket at hours no one else does , or just taking a walk in the middle of the afternoon… or whatever… but, adding order to it, made me more productive, and… happier!
thanks for all of your advice! i started making to do list since a post you posted a while back, and it has been a real help too!!
(well… sorry for the loooong post! )
cheers from Uruguay!

Oh man, so dead on ha! Love the tips. I am a…hmmmm, what to call it? I guess it’d be kinda like a “pre-blogger”. On top of being a procrastinator I also have the added bonus of being a perfectionist: double whammy, yikes!

I had started making my list……like a month ago. Need to nix that and get to it. As they say: Don’t stop, get it, get it. 🙂

Thanks for sharing these great tips! As someone who works from home, I have found these ideas really important to my productivity (and must admit that I have noticed when I don’t follow them at times that I spend more time procrastinating and less time being productive). The other thing that has been important to me is setting a finish time each day – having time to relax and enjoy other aspects of my life helps me to feel refreshed and rejuvenated when I start work the next day so I’m less likely to spend time procrastinating 😀

I’m just getting started on a blog for fun and I’m really having a hard time with time management. Do you have any tips or examples on how you would set up a week’s schedule for a post or two? (i.e. how you separate the work for a single post – photos, editing, writing, etc.) Love you guys and your blog! It makes me happy to come to your site!

My husband gifted me the Blog Life e-course for Christmas this year and planning and scheduling posts was the number one thing that worked for me as far as procrastination goes. 🙂 If I’m just running from idea to idea, it can be difficult to get the gumption to be brilliant during your designated blog time. But if I’ve already figured out what I’m going to do during my time and I’m not starting from scratch, I’ve found so much more success.
I’m still a work in progress but aren’t we all? 🙂

Great tips! I find myself procrastinating with my blog posts sometimes so I’ve made a rule where I have to write for an hour, usually I end up finishing one or two posts and continuing to work. It’s sitting down and working that is the hardest part sometimes =o)

Again, this is another really helpful post for new bloggers like myself. For the past month, I have been following what you’ve discussed – making lists, planning content and executing and making time for editing and posting. Thank you, ABM, for always keeping me inspired!

To-do lists are my biggest friend, and it’s not only for motivation reasons – if I don’t make them, I’m very likely to simply forget an important task.

I especially love your third tip about work hours – I’ll start scheduling those. Now that I’ve graduated I finally have more time for blogging, but as you say, it’s so easy to get distracted by unimportant stuff. I think that devoting specific hours during the day to my blog will help me to stay more focused.

Having a list and sticking to work hours are great points! One of my favourite books on this topic is “Eat that Frog” by Brian Tracy. One of the main points of the book is that you tackle the biggest, scariest task first, get that out of the way, then everything else seems so much easier in comparison. It’s definitely a sense of accomplishment when you complete a task that isn’t easy to do.

Planning is great! I also like to review and reflect on the result of the day – what I’ve done, and what possibly can be done in a given amount of time, which part of the plan wasn’t complete and why, which part of the plan took too much time, or on the contrary, maybe it was really exciting to do and took just a bit of time. I’m new to blogging, so this really helps.

Love this. I find it difficult to keep myself on a set schedule because I also work in retail, and my hours are different every single day. BUT… I do find that I probably should start making a list of tasks that I need to accomplish to help out my blog every single day. Taking a course might be something I will invest in as well. Thanks for the tips! (www.wanderingthespian.com)